10 Largest Countries In Europe - 10 Most Today 10 Largest Countries In Europe Lists Of Countries There are 50 countries in Europe, and with one great exception (Russia – which resides on both Europe and Asia), Europe’s 10 largest countries are far from the sizes of the world’s largest countries . After listing Europe’s 10 smallest countries , here’s a list of Europe’s largest countries, by area 1. Russia – Russia resides on both Europe and Asia. It’s area in Europe alone is 3,836,652 km² (1,481,340 mi²) which makes it the largest country in Europe. It’s total area including Asia is 17,098,242 km² (6,601,668 mi²), which makes it by far the largest country in the world. Russia is the only European country in the list of the 10 largest countries in the world. Click here for Moscow attractions The Moscow Kremlin, in Russia, the largest country in Europe and the world 2.

Ukraine – The Second largest country in Europe is Ukraine, which has an area of 603,628 km² (233,062 mi²) including Crimea, over which it is currently in dispute with Russia The famous Potemkin Stairs in Odessa, Ukraine 3. France – The largest country in the European Union and third largest in the entire continent is France, with an area of 551,695 km² (213,010 mi²). Like other Western European countries, France is among the world’s most visited countries , and is often first in the list. Click here for Paris attractions Mont Saint Michel in the western coast of France 4. Spain – The largest country in the Iberian Peninsula has an area of 505,992 km² (195,364 mi²) – about 10% smaller than France. Here are my lists for best attractions in: Barcelona , Madrid and Seville The white houses of Granada, seen from the famous Alhambra palace, the most visited site in all of Spain 5.

Sweden – In the north, Sweden has an area of 449,964 km² (173,732 mi²) – the largest of the Scandinavian countries The Royal palace in Stockholm, Sweden (source: Brorsson ) 6. Germany – Located at the heart of the continent, Germany has an area of 357,168 km² (137,903 mi²). Click here for my list of best attractions in Berlin The Spree River with the Berlin TV Tower in the background, Berlin, Germany 7. Finland – Finland is Europe’s 7th largest country, and the EU’s 5th largest, with an area of 338,145 km² (130,558 mi²) Aleksanterinkatu street in Helsinki, Finland 8. Norway – The second largest of the Scandinavian countries, Norway has an area 323,802 km² (125,020 mi²) Oslo, Norway (source: Jean-Pierre Dalbéra ) 9.

Poland – Poland has an area of 312,685 km² (125,728 mi²), not much smaller than Germany, to which it borders to the west Market Square in the Warsaw’s old town, Poland (source: Adrian Grycuk ) 10. Italy – Closing the list of 10 largest countries in the old continent, the boot shaped country has an area of 301,318 km² (116,339 mi²). Here are my lists for best attractions in: Rome , Florence , Milan and Venice Vernazza, one of the villages in Cinque Terre, Italy. Cinque Terre is one of the world’s most colorful places From cold war to hot war | The Economist What Russia wants From cold war to hot war Russia’s aggression in Ukraine is part of a broader, and more dangerous, confrontation with the West Feb 14th 2015 Tweet THE pens were on the table in Minsk, Belarus’s capital, for the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine to sign a deal to end a year-long war fuelled by Russia and fought by its proxies.

But on February 12th, after all-night talks, they were put away. “No good news,” said Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president. Instead there will be a ceasefire from February 15th. A tentative agreement has been reached to withdraw heavy weaponry. But Russia looks sure to be able to keep open its border with Ukraine and sustain the flow of arms and people. The siege of Debaltseve, a strategic transport hub held by Ukrainian forces, continues. Russia is holding military exercises on its side of the border. Crimea was not even mentioned. In this section Reprints Meanwhile the IMF has said it will lend Ukraine $17.5 billion to prop up its economy. But Mr Putin seems to be relying on a familiar Russian tactic of exhausting his negotiating counterparts and taking two steps forward, one step back. He is counting on time and endurance to bring the collapse and division of Ukraine and a revision of the post-cold war world order. Nearly a quarter-century after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West faces a greater threat from the East than at any point during the cold war.

Even during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, Soviet leaders were constrained by the Politburo and memories of the second world war. Now, according to Russia’s chief propagandist, Dmitry Kiselev, even a decision about the use of nuclear arms “will be taken personally by Mr Putin, who has the undoubted support of the Russian people”. Bluff or not, this reflects the Russian elite’s perception of the West as a threat to the very existence of the Russian state. In this view Russia did not start the war in Ukraine, but responded to Western aggression. The Maidan uprising and ousting of Viktor Yanukovych as Ukraine’s president were engineered by American special services to move NATO closer to Russia’s borders. Once Mr Yanukovych had gone, American envoys offered Ukraine’s interim government $25 billion to place missile defences on the Russian border, in order to shift the balance of nuclear power towards America. Russia had no choice but to act. Even without Ukraine, Mr Putin has said, America would have found some other excuse to contain Russia. Ukraine, therefore, was not the cause of Russia’s conflict with the West, but its consequence.

Mr Putin’s purpose is not to rebuild the Soviet empire—he knows this is impossible—but to protect Russia’s sovereignty. By this he means its values, the most important of which is a monopoly on state power. Behind Russia’s confrontation with the West lies a clash of ideas. On one side are human rights, an accountable bureaucracy and democratic elections; on the other an unconstrained state that can sacrifice its citizens’ interests to further its destiny or satisfy its rulers’ greed. Both under communism and before it, the Russian state acquired religious attributes. It is this sacred state which is under threat. Mr Putin sits at its apex. “No Putin—no Russia,” a deputy chief of staff said recently. His former KGB colleagues—the Committee of State Security—are its guardians, servants and priests, and entitled to its riches. Theirs is not a job, but an elite and hereditary calling. Expropriating a private firm’s assets to benefit a state firm is therefore not an act of corruption. When thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets demanding a Western-European way of life, the Kremlin saw this as a threat to its model of governance.

Alexander Prokhanov, a nationalist writer who backs Russia’s war in Ukraine, compares European civilisation to a magnet attracting Ukraine and Russia. Destabilising Ukraine is not enough to counter that force: the magnet itself must be neutralised. Russia feels threatened not by any individual European state, but by the European Union and NATO, which it regards as expansionist. It sees them as “occupied” by America, which seeks to exploit Western values to gain influence over the rest of the world. America “wants to freeze the order established after the Soviet collapse and remain an absolute leader, thinking it can do whatever it likes, while others can do only what is in that leader’s interests,” Mr Putin said recently. “Maybe some want to live in a semi-occupied state, but we do not.” Russia has taken to arguing that it is not fighting Ukraine, but America in Ukraine. The Ukrainian army is just a foreign legion of NATO, and American soldiers are killing Russian proxies in the Donbas. Anti-Americanism is not only the reason for war and the main pillar of state power, but also an ideology that Russia is trying to export to Europe, as it once exported communism.

Anti-Westernism has been dressed not in communist clothes, but in imperial and even clerical ones (see article ). “We see how many Euro-Atlantic countries are in effect turning away from their roots, including their Christian values,” said Mr Putin in 2013. Russia, by contrast, “has always been a state civilisation held together by the Russian people, the Russian language, Russian culture and the Russian Orthodox church.” The Donbas rebels are fighting not only the Ukrainian army, but against a corrupt Western way of life in order to defend Russia’s distinct world view. Mistaken hopes Many in the West equate the end of communism with the end of the cold war. In fact, by the time the Soviet Union fell apart, Marxism-Leninism was long dead. Stalin replaced the ideals of internationalism, equality and social justice that the Bolsheviks had proclaimed in 1917 with imperialism and state dominance over all spheres of life. Mikhail Gorbachev’s revolution consisted not in damping down Marxism but in proclaiming the supremacy of universal human values over the state, opening up Russia to the West. Nationalists, Stalinists, communists and monarchists united against Mr Gorbachev.

Anti-Americanism had brought Stalinists and nationalists within the Communist Party closer together. When communism collapsed they united against Boris Yeltsin and his attempts to make Russia “normal”, by which he meant a Western-style free-market democracy. By 1993, when members of this coalition were ejected by pro-Yeltsin forces from the parliament building they had occupied in Moscow, they seemed defeated. Yet nationalism has resurfaced. Those who fought Yeltsin and his ideas were active in the annexation of Crimea and are involved in the war in south-east Ukraine. Alexander Borodai, the first “prime minister” of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, who fought with anti-Yeltsin forces, hails Mr Putin as the leader of the nationalist movement in Russia today. Yet for a few years after Mr Putin came to power he built close relations with NATO. In his first two presidential terms, rising living standards helped buy acceptance of his monopoly on state power and reliance on ex-KGB men; now that the economy is shrinking, the threat of war is needed to legitimise his rule. He forged his alliance with Orthodox nationalists only during mass street protests by Westernised liberals in 2012, when he returned to the Kremlin.

Instead of tear gas, he has used nationalist, imperialist ideas, culminating in the annexation of Crimea and the slow subjugation of south-east Ukraine. Hard power and soft Mr Putin’s preferred method is “hybrid warfare”: a blend of hard and soft power. A combination of instruments, some military and some non-military, choreographed to surprise, confuse and wear down an opponent, hybrid warfare is ambiguous in both source and intent, making it hard for multinational bodies such as NATO and the EU to craft a response. But without the ability to apply hard power, Russia’s version of soft power would achieve little. Russia “has invested heavily in defence,” says NATO’s new secretary-general, a former Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg. “It has shown it can deploy forces at very short notice…above all, it has shown a willingness to use force.” Mr Putin drew two lessons from his brief war in Georgia in 2008. The first was that Russia could deploy hard power in countries that had been in the Soviet Union and were outside NATO with little risk of the West responding with force. The second, after a slapdash campaign, was that Russia’s armed forces needed to be reformed.

Military modernisation became a personal mission to redress “humiliations” visited by an “overweening” West on Russia since the cold war ended. According to IHS Jane’s, a defence consultancy, by next year Russia’s defence spending will have tripled in nominal terms since 2007, and it will be halfway through a ten-year, 20 trillion rouble ($300 billion) programme to modernise its weapons. New types of missiles, bombers and submarines are being readied for deployment over the next few years. Spending on defence and security is expected to climb by 30% this year and swallow more than a third of the federal budget. As well as money for combat aircraft, helicopters, armoured vehicles and air-defence systems, about a third of the budget has been earmarked to overhaul Russia’s nuclear forces. A revised military doctrine signed by Mr Putin in December identified “reinforcement of NATO’s offensive capacities directly on Russia’s borders, and measures taken to deploy a global anti-missile defence system” in central Europe as the greatest threats Russia faces. In itself, that may not be cause for alarm in the West.

Russian nuclear doctrine has changed little since 2010, when the bar for first use was slightly raised to situations in which “the very existence of the state is under threat”. That may reflect growing confidence in Russia’s conventional forces. But Mr Putin is fond of saying that nobody should try to shove Russia around when it has one of the world’s biggest nuclear arsenals. Mr Kiselev puts it even more bluntly: “During the years of romanticism [ie, detente], the Soviet Union undertook not to use nuclear weapons first. Modern Russian doctrine does not. The illusions are gone.” Mr Putin still appears wedded to a strategy he conceived in 2000: threatening a limited nuclear strike to force an opponent (ie, America and its NATO allies) to withdraw from a conflict in which Russia has an important stake, such as in Georgia or Ukraine. Nearly all its large-scale military exercises in the past decade have featured simulations of limited nuclear strikes, including one on Warsaw. Mr Putin has also been streamlining his armed forces, with the army recruiting 60,000 contract soldiers each year. Professionals now make up 30% of the force.

Conscripts may bulk up the numbers, but for the kind of complex, limited wars Mr Putin wants to be able to win, they are pretty useless. Ordinary contract soldiers are also still a long way behind special forces such as the GRU Spetsnaz (the “little green men” who went into Crimea without military insignia) and the elite airborne VDV troops, but they are catching up. Boots on the ground South-east Ukraine shows the new model army at work. Spetsnaz units first trained the Kremlin-backed separatist rebels in tactics and the handling of sophisticated Russian weapons. But when the Ukrainian government began to make headway in early summer, Russia had regular forces near the border to provide a calibrated (and still relatively covert) response. It is hard to tell how many Russian troops have seen action in Ukraine, as their vehicles and uniforms carry no identifiers. But around 4,000 were sent to relieve Luhansk and Donetsk while threatening the coastal city of Mariupol—enough to convince Mr Poroshenko to draw his troops back. Since November a new build-up of Russian forces has been under way.

Ukrainian military intelligence reckons there may be 9,000 in their country (NATO has given no estimate). Another 50,000 are on the Russian side of the border. Despite Mr Putin’s claim last year that he could “take Kiev in two weeks” if he wanted, a full-scale invasion and subsequent occupation is beyond Russia. But a Russian-controlled mini-state, Novorossiya, similar to Abkhazia and Transdniestria, could be more or less economically sustainable. And it would end Ukraine’s hopes of ever regaining sovereignty over its territory other than on Russian terms, which would undoubtedly include staying out of the EU and NATO. Not a bad outcome for Mr Putin, and within reach with the hard power he controls. The big fear for NATO is that Mr Putin turns his hybrid warfare against a member country. Particularly at risk are the Baltic states—Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania—two of which have large Russian-speaking minorities.

In January Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s previous secretary-general, said there was a “high probability” that Mr Putin would test NATO’s Article 5, which regards an attack on any member as an attack on all—though “he will be defeated” if he does so. A pattern of provocation has been established that includes a big increase in the number of close encounters involving Russian aircraft and naval vessels, and snap exercises by Russian forces close to NATO’s northern and eastern borders. Last year NATO planes carried out more than 400 intercepts of Russian aircraft. More than 150 were by the alliance’s beefed-up Baltic air-policing mission—four times as many as in 2013. In the first nine months of the year, 68 “hot” identifications and interdictions occurred along the Lithuanian border alone. Latvia recorded more than 150 incidents of Russian planes entering its airspace. There have also been at least two near-misses between Russian military aircraft and Swedish airliners. This is dangerous stuff: Russian pilots do not file flight plans. They fly with transponders switched off, which makes them invisible to civil radar.

On January 28th two Russian, possibly nuclear-armed, strategic bombers flew down the English Channel, causing havoc to commercial aviation. Such behaviour is intended to test Western air defences, and was last seen in the cold war. Mr Stoltenberg calls it “risky and unjustified”. Since 2013, when Russia restarted large-scale snap military exercises, at least eight have been held. In December the Kremlin ordered one in Kaliningrad, an exclave that borders Lithuania and Poland, both NATO members. It mobilised 9,000 soldiers, more than 55 navy ships and every type of military aircraft. “This pattern of behaviour can be used to hide intent,” says General Philip Breedlove, NATO’s most senior commander. “What is it masking? What is it conditioning us for?” A huge problem for NATO is that most of what Russia might attempt will be below the radar of traditional collective defence. According to Mr Stoltenberg, deciding whether an Article 5 attack has taken place means both recognising what is going on and knowing who is behind it.

“We need more intelligence and better situational awareness,” he says; but adds that NATO allies accept that if the arrival of little green men can be attributed “to an aggressor nation, it is an Article 5 action and then all the assets of NATO come to bear.” For all the rhetoric of the cold war, the Soviet Union and America had been allies and winners in the second world war and felt a certain respect for each other. The Politburo suffered from no feelings of inferiority. In contrast, Mr Putin and his KGB men came out of the cold war as losers. What troubles Mr Stoltenberg greatly about Mr Putin’s new, angry Russia is that it is harder to deal with than the old Soviet Union. As a Norwegian, used to sharing an Arctic border with Russia, he says that “even during the coldest period of the cold war we were able to have a pragmatic conversation with them on many security issues”. Russia had “an interest in stability” then, “but not now”. Meddling and perverting Destabilisation is also being achieved in less military ways.

Wielding power or gaining influence abroad—through antiestablishment political parties, disgruntled minority groups, media outlets, environmental activists, supporters in business, propagandist “think-tanks”, and others—has become part of the Kremlin’s hybrid-war strategy. This perversion of “soft power” is seen by Moscow as a vital complement to military engagement. Certainly Russia is not alone in abusing soft power. The American government’s aid agency, USAID, has planted tweets in Cuba and the Middle East to foster dissent. And Mr Putin has hinted that Russia needs to fight this way because America and others are already doing so, through “pseudo-NGOs”, CNN and human-rights groups. At home Russian media, which are mostly state-controlled, churn out lies and conspiracy theories. Abroad, the main conduit for the Kremlin’s world view is RT, a TV channel set up in 2005 to promote a positive view of Russia that now focuses on making the West look bad. It uses Western voices: far-left anti-globalists, far-right nationalists and disillusioned individuals. It broadcasts in English, Arabic and Spanish and is planning German- and French-language channels.

It claims to reach 700m people worldwide and 2.7m hotel rooms. Though it is not a complete farce, it has broadcast a string of false stories, such as one speculating that America was behind the Ebola epidemic in west Africa. The Kremlin is also a sophisticated user of the internet and social media. It employs hundreds of “trolls” to garrison the comment sections and Twitter feeds of the West. The point is not so much to promote the Kremlin’s views, but to denigrate opposition figures, and foreign governments and institutions, and to sow fear and confusion. Vast sums have been thrown at public-relations and lobbying firms to improve Russia’s image abroad—among them Ketchum, based in New York, which helped place an op-ed by Mr Putin in the New York Times. And it can rely on some of its corporate partners to lobby against policies that would hurt Russian business. The West’s willingness to shelter Russian money, some of it gained corruptly, demoralises the Russian opposition while making the West more dependent on the Kremlin. Russian money has had a poisonous effect closer to home, too.

Russia wields soft power in the Baltics partly through its “compatriots policy”, which entails financial support for Russian-speaking minorities abroad. Mr Putin’s most devious strategy, however, is to destabilise the EU through fringe political parties (see article ). Russia’s approach to ideology is fluid: it supports both far-left and far-right groups. As Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss put it in “The menace of unreality”, a paper on Russian soft power: “The aim is to exacerbate divides [in the West] and create an echo-chamber of Kremlin support.” Disruptive politics Far-right groups are seduced by the idea of Moscow as a counterweight to the EU, and by its law-and-order policies. Its stance on homosexuality and promotion of “traditional” moral values appeal to religious conservatives. The far left likes the talk of fighting American hegemony. Russia’s most surprising allies, however, are probably Europe’s Greens. They are opposed to shale-gas fracking and nuclear power—as is Moscow, because both promise to lessen Europe’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels. Mr Rasmussen has accused Russia of “sophisticated” manipulation of information to hobble fracking in Europe, though without producing concrete evidence.

There is circumstantial evidence in Bulgaria, which in 2012 cancelled a permit for Chevron to explore for shale gas after anti-fracking protests. Some saw Russia’s hand in these, possibly to punish the pro-European government of the time, which sought to reduce its reliance on Russian energy (Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled gas giant, supplies 90% of Bulgaria’s gas). Previously, Bulgaria had been expected to transport Russian oil through its planned South Stream pipeline, and its parliament had approved a bill that would have exempted the project from awkward EU rules. Much of it had been written by Gazprom, and the construction contract was to go to a firm owned by Gennady Timchenko, an oligarch now under Western sanctions. Gazprom offered to finance the pipeline and to sponsor a Bulgarian football team. The energy minister at the time later claimed he had been offered bribes by a Russian envoy to smooth the project’s passage. Though European opposition means it has now been scrapped, the episode shows the methods Moscow uses to protect its economic interests. In all this Mr Putin is evidently acting not only for Russia’s sake, but for his own.

Mr Borodai, the rebel ideologue in Donetsk, says that if necessary the Russian volunteers who are fighting today in Donbas will tomorrow defend their president on the streets of Moscow. Yet, although Mr Putin may believe he is using nationalists, the nationalists believe they are using him to consolidate their power. What they aspire to, with or without Mr Putin, is that Russians rally behind the nationalist state and their leader to take on Western liberalism. This is not a conflict that could have been resolved in Minsk. Timeline picture credits: Reuters; Ria Novosti EASTERN EUROPE EASTERN EUROPE FIND OUT MORE Once part of the former Soviet Union, the countries of eastern Europe are now independent republics. The region stretches from the Arctic in the north to the Crimea in the south, and from the Baltic Sea in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east. Much of the landscape is forested. There are also hills and lakes in the Baltic area, marshes in Belarus, and rolling plains in the Ukraine and Russian Federation. WHAT ARE THE BALTIC STATES? Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are known as the Baltic states because they border the Baltic Sea.

Coastal ports provide access to shipping trade routes between northern and eastern Europe, but the sea ices up during the cold winter months. In summer, the long coastline attracts many tourists from Finland and Scandinavia. They come to enjoy the area’s unspoiled beaches, sand dunes, and islands. WHY WAS THE UKRAINE ONCE KNOWN AS A “BREADBASKET” ? The Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe. It was known as a “breadbasket” because it once supplied grain to the former Soviet Union and provided this vast population with its bread. The country is covered by flat, fertile plains known as steppes. Here, large farms still produce huge quantities of wheat, corn, barley, oats, buckwheat, and rye. The Ukraine broke away from Soviet control in 1991. WHY DO MOST PEOPLE LIVE IN THE EUROPEAN PART OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION (RUSSIA)? Over 100 million people live in the European part of Russia because it has a milder climate, fertile farmland, and is highly industrialized. Most people live in big cities, such as St. Petersburg and the capital, Moscow.

The Russian Federation is the world’s largest country. Two-thirds of it lies in Asia, but vast expanses are uninhabited because the climate is so harsh. IS RUSSIA RICH IN NATURAL RESOURCES? The Russian Federation has huge natural resources. The land is rich in minerals and has many mines from which diamonds, gold, nickel, copper, iron, and other metals are extracted. The country is also a leading producer of oil and gas and has enormous reserves of coal. WHICH PRECIOUS MATERIAL IS FOUND ALONG THE BALTIC COAST? Two-thirds of the world’s amber is found washed up on the shores of the Baltic Sea in chunks of different shapes and sizes. Amber is the fossilized sap of ancient pine trees. It forms over millions of years buried in sediments under the sea. The most sought-after amber is collected in shades of yellow, orange, or gold and is cut and polished to make jewelry. WHICH CROPS ARE GROWN IN MOLDOVA’S FERTILE FARMLAND? Moldova’s fertile black soil enables farmers to grow a variety of crops, such as wheat, corn, and sunflowers.

The country’s mild climate is also well suited to growing fruit and grape vines, which are used to make wine. WHY DO PEOPLE VISIT THE CRIMEA IN THE UKRAINE? The Crimea is a peninsula in southern Ukraine that juts into the Black Sea. The region’s warm summers and mild winters attract many tourists who cram onto the crowded beaches. Holiday resorts, such as Yalta and Sevastopol, cater for visitors who come for a healthy regimen of massage, exercise, and rest. WHERE ARE EUROPE’S LARGEST MARSHLANDS? Vast areas in the south of Belarus are low-lying and covered by swampy marshland, fed by the Byerazino and Dnieper Rivers. The Pripet Marshes stretch over 15,500 sq miles (40,000 sq km) and form the largest expanse of wetland in Europe. The marshes and surrounding forests are a haven for wildlife, including elk, lynx, wild boar, and grouse. FACTFILE: EASTERN EUROPE Regional Distribution of Christians | Pew Research Center Regional Distribution of Christians Quiz This report divides the world into five regions to take a closer look at the geographic distribution of Christians.

(To view all the countries in each region, see the Interactive Maps .) The five regions are presented in descending order of Christian population, with the region with the highest number of Christians (the Americas) appearing first and the region with the lowest number of Christians (the Middle East-North Africa) appearing last. Americas (51 COUNTRIES AND TERRITORIES) Christians living in the Americas make up 37% of Christians worldwide. 8 The three countries in the Americas with the largest Christian populations also have the three largest Christian populations in the world: the United States (247 million Christians), Brazil (176 million) and Mexico (108 million). The 10 countries in the Americas with the largest number of Christians collectively are home to a third (33%) of all the world’s Christians. Nearly two-thirds of Christians in the Americas (65%) are Catholic. Protestants make up a third of all Christians (33%) in the region. About 2% of the region’s Christians fall into the other Christian category, and less than 1% are Orthodox Christians.

Spotlight on Brazil More than 175 million Brazilians are Christian, making the country’s Christian population the largest outside the United States. By way of comparison, Brazil has more than twice as many Christians as Nigeria and about three times as many as Germany. Indeed, nearly one-in-twelve Christians in the world (8%) are Brazilian, and an overwhelming majority of Brazilians (90%) identify themselves as Christian. Since the Portuguese conquest of Brazil in the 16th century, the country has been overwhelmingly Catholic. In 1950, almost 94% of Brazilians identified with Catholicism; as recently as 1980, Catholic affiliation approached 90%. Between 1980 and 2000, however, the Catholic share of Brazil’s population fell by 15 percentage points to 74%. 1 Despite the decline, Brazil’s Catholic population of about 134 million remains by far the largest in the world. (Mexico’s Catholic population is a distant second at 96 million.) About one-in-eight Catholics worldwide (12%) are Brazilian. Catholicism’s historical dominance in Brazil has given way to increasing Christian diversity.

In 1940, only 2.6% of Brazil’s population was Protestant. 2 Now about 21% of the population is Protestant. This fastgrowing Protestant community is overwhelmingly pentecostal; according to a 2006 Pew Forum survey, 72% of Protestants interviewed indicated they were pentecostal. 3 (For more details on pentecostals, see Defining Christian Movements .) Pentecostal beliefs and practices also are changing the way many of Brazil’s Catholics practice their faith. The 2006 Pew Forum survey found that more than half of Brazilian Catholics identify with the charismatic movement, which includes members of non-pentecostal denominations who engage in at least some spiritual practices associated with pentecostalism, such as divine healing and speaking in tongues. 4 (For more details on charismatics, see Defining Christian Movements .) Footnotes: 1 Figures cited in this sidebar are from Brazil’s national decennial census. For more details on religious trends in Brazil, see Luis Lugo, “ Pope to Visit ‘Pentecostalized’ Brazil ,” Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 2007.

(return to text) 2 The figure is from Brazil’s national census. See Emilio Willems, Followers of the New Faith; Culture Change and the Rise of Protestantism in Brazil and Chile, Vanderbilt University Press, 1967, pages 66-67. (return to text) 3 Approximately eight-in-ten Protestants interviewed indicated they were either pentecostal or charismatic. Survey results suggest that the Assemblies of God is the single largest pentecostal church, accounting for four-in-ten pentecostals. The survey was based on a probability sample of Brazilian cities and surrounding areas and excluded rural parts of the country. See Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals , 2006. (return to text) 4 Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals , 2006. (return to text) Spotlight on the United States The United States is the world’s third most populous country, but it has by far the largest Christian population. With nearly a quarter of a billion Christians, the U.S.

dwarfs even Brazil, which has the world’s second-largest Christian community (more than 175 million). About 80% of the U.S. population identifies as Christian, and U.S. Christians represent 11% of the world’s Christians.Since the birth of the nation in 1776, the vast majority of religious Americans have been Christian. The settlers who colonized the Eastern seaboard between New France in the north and Florida in the south came largely from majority-Protestant Northern Europe, especially England, Scotland, Wales, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Northern Germany. American Christianity went from being dominated by a few established Protestant denominations in the founding era to today’s highly diverse mix, with innumerable Protestant groups, a large Catholic population and significant numbers of Orthodox and other Christians. In 1776, the vast majority of Americans active in a religious body belonged to only a handful of Protestant denominations: Congregationalist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist and Quaker. By the mid-19th century, however, the picture had changed. The Methodist Church had become by far the largest Protestant denomination by 1850.

And before the end of the 19th century, Roman Catholics — who represented a small portion of the population in 1776 and only 5% in 1850 — became America’s largest single Christian group, although Protestants collectively still greatly outnumbered Catholics. By 1906, the U.S. was home to 14 million Catholics, who represented 17% of the population. 1 Today, fortified by a steady flow of immigrants from mostly Catholic Latin America, Catholics in the U.S. number more than 74 million, about 24% of the U.S. population. The Southern Baptist Convention is now the largest U.S. Protestant denomination. 2 Other factors, too, have diversified America’s religious landscape. Other Christian groups such as Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, many of which were founded in the United States in the 19th century, have grown dramatically and together number nearly 11 million adherents, or about 3% of the U.S. population. The U.S. is also home to nearly 2 million Orthodox Christians.

Membership in long-established Protestant churches, such as Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Methodists, has declined, while membership in newer evangelical and pentecostal churches has grown. Today, the U.S. has more evangelical Protestants than any other country in the world. At the same time, the proportion of Americans who are Christian has declined in recent years, from well over 90% in 1900 to almost 80% today. This has happened for a variety of reasons, including the growth in “unaffiliated” Americans (atheists, agnostics and those who say they do not have any religion in particular), as well as postwar non-Christian immigration from the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East-North Africa. In addition, a nation whose population was overwhelmingly Protestant a century ago has had, in recent years, a declining Protestant majority (51% in 2007, according to the Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey ).

3 US 1 Historical data in this and the preceding paragraph are drawn from Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, Rutgers University Press, 2005. (return to text) 2 Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey , conducted in 2007 and published in 2008. (return to text) 3 Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey , conducted in 2007 and published in 2008. (return to text) Europe (50 COUNTRIES AND TERRITORIES) Roughly a quarter of the world’s Christians (26%) live in Europe. 9 This makes Europe the region with the second-largest share of the world’s Christians, following the Americas. Russia has the largest absolute number of Christians in Europe (105 million). Despite the Communist government’s attempts to minimize religion in the country for much of the 20th century, more than 70% of Russians are Christian, primarily Orthodox Christian.

10 Russia alone accounts for about 19% of Europe’s Christians and nearly 5% of the world’s Christians. Russia and the other nine countries with the largest number of Christians in Europe (Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, France, Ukraine, Spain, Poland, Romania and Greece) collectively are home to one-in-five (20%) of the world’s Christians. Catholics are the largest Christian group in Europe, accounting for more than four-in-ten European Christians (46%). The second-largest Christian group in Europe is the Orthodox, who make up 35% of European Christians. The overwhelming majority of the world’s Orthodox Christians (76%) reside in Europe. Although the Protestant Reformation began in Europe, today fewer than one-in-five European Christians (18%) are part of the Protestant tradition as broadly defined in this report. (See Defining Christian Traditions .) Spotlight on Germany Germany has about 58 million Christians, making it the country with the largest Christian population in Western Europe and second only to Russia in Europe as a whole. Germany’s Christian population is also the ninth-largest in the world.

More than 70% of the country’s total population is Christian, divided almost evenly between Protestants and Roman Catholics. Germanic tribes such as the Goths, Lombards and Franks were gradually converted to Roman Catholicism between roughly the 5th and 8th centuries. The formation of the Holy Roman Empire, beginning in the 10th century, served to consolidate Catholic influence across central Europe. The 16th-century Protestant Reformation, launched by the German Augustinian monk Martin Luther, divided the territories of what is now Germany into a predominantly Protestant North and a predominantly Catholic South. This division endures today. (States that belonged to East Germany were predominantly Protestant, but they saw a substantial decline in religious adherence during communist rule.) There are nearly 29 million Protestants in Germany today, accounting for about a third of the overall population, and most are members of the Evangelical Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland). Roman Catholics account for a third of the German population, totaling about 28 million. Germany also is home to more than a million Orthodox Christians and more than 500,000 other Christians.

According to historical estimates, roughly 60% of Germans were Protestant before World War II, and about one-third professed Roman Catholicism. This suggests that the Protestant proportion of the population has declined significantly, whereas the Catholic proportion has remained roughly the same. 1 Muslims represent the largest non-Christian religious group in Germany. Germany’s estimated Muslim population in 2010 was about 4.1 million, or about 5% of the total population. 2 Footnotes: 1 “Germany,” in David B. Barrett, George Thomas Kurian and Todd M. Johnson, editors, World Christian Encyclopedia, Volume 1: The World by Countries: Religionists, Churches, Ministries, Oxford University Press, 2001, page 299. (return to text) 2 Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010-2030 , 2011. (return to text) Spotlight on United Kingdom Christians are by far the largest religious group in the United Kingdom, representing more than 70% of its population.

The U.K.’s Christian population of 45 million is the fourth-largest in Europe and the 12th-largest in the world. The majority of Christians in the United Kingdom are Anglicans. (For more information on Anglicans, see Defining Christian Traditions on page 38.) Christianity arrived in the British Isles as early as the 1st century. In the late 6th century, Pope Gregory the Great sent a missionary, Augustine, to convert the Anglo-Saxon peoples of Britain. Augustine became the first archbishop of Canterbury and primate of an officially recognized Church of England, in full communion with the pope. Catholic Christianity had become firmly established in England, Scotland and Wales by the time King Henry VIII declared his supremacy over the English church in 1534. While the eventual result of the English Reformation was that most of the English people came to adhere to Anglicanism, a minority remained loyal Catholics or joined “non-conformist” groups that rejected the official church as insufficiently reformed. 1 Though the United Kingdom’s population remains predominantly Christian, surveys and censuses indicate that a declining share of the population identifies as Christian.

For example, the Annual Population Survey conducted by Britain’s Office of National Statistics found that the proportion of people professing Christianity fell from about 78% in 2004-2005 to about 72% in 2008. 2 Footnotes: 1 “UK of Great Britain & Northern Ireland,” in David B. Barrett, editor, World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Study of Churches and Religions in the Modern World, AD 1900-2000, Oxford University Press, 1982, pages 699-703. (return to text) 2 Each round of the Annual Population Survey had a sample size of more than 300,000 people. The survey does not include data from Northern Ireland. (return to text) Spotlight on Russia Straddling Europe and Asia, Russia could be considered the most populous Christian-majority country on both continents. But for the purposes of this report, Russia is considered a European nation. Its 105 million Christians constitute the world’s fourth-largest Christian population (and the single largest outside the Americas). About 5% of the world’s Christians live in Russia.

Moreover, Russia is home to the largest autocephalous (or ecclesiastically independent) Eastern Orthodox Church in the world, the Russian Orthodox Church. 1 Byzantine monks first introduced Christianity into Russia in the 9th century. Following his baptism in 988, Vladimir I, the prince of Kiev, led his people into Christianity. The Eastern Orthodox Church has remained the largest religious institution in Russia despite monumental changes in the country’s political system, from monarchy, to Soviet communism, to the current parliamentary and presidential system. Today, a little more than 70% of Russia’s population identifies as Orthodox. 2 While Orthodox Christianity is still the dominant religion in Russia, other Christian traditions have grown in recent decades. Outside of the Orthodox Church, Protestants constitute the largest Christian group, with nearly 3 million adherents. A large segment of the Russian population does not identify as Christian, including many who are unaffiliated with any particular religion. According to a 2011 Pew Forum report, Russia has the largest Muslim population in Europe (in absolute numbers). 3 Footnotes: 1 “Orthodox, 1910-2010,” in Todd M. Johnson and Kenneth R.

Ross, editors, Atlas of Global Christianity, Edinburgh University Press, 2009, page 86. (return to text) 2 Harold Berman, “Freedom of Religion in Russia,” in John Witte and Michael Bourdeaux, editors, Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia: The New War for Souls, Orbis Books, 1999, page 266. (return to text) 3 The Pew Forum’s January 2011 report, The Future of the Global Muslim Population, found that, as of 2010, there were 16.4 million Muslims in Russia. See Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010-2030 , 2011. (return to text) Sub-Saharan Africa (51 COUNTRIES AND TERRITORIES) Sub-Saharan Africa has more than 500 million Christians, which makes it the region with the third-largest number of Christians worldwide. 11 Collectively, the region’s 51 countries and territories are home to nearly a quarter of the world’s Christians (24%).

Together, the 10 countries with the largest number of Christians in sub-Saharan Africa have about one-in-six of the world’s Christians. The majority of Christians in sub-Saharan Africa are Protestant (57%), as broadly defined in this report; this includes members of African Independent Churches and Anglicans. 12 About one-in-three Christians in the region (34%) are Catholic. Orthodox Christians account for about 8% of the region’s Christians, and other Christians make up the remaining 1%. Spotlight on Nigeria Nigeria is sub-Saharan Africa’s most populous country and is home to the region’s largest Christian population. The West African nation has more than 80 million Christians, who account for about half of the country’s total population. There are more Christians in Nigeria than in any single nation in traditionally Christian Western Europe. 1 In fact, Nigeria’s Christian population is nearly the same size as the total population of Germany. Nigeria’s Muslim population is nearly equal to its Christian population; according to the Pew Forum’s 2011 analysis of the global Muslim population, there were about 76 million Muslims in Nigeria in 2010.

2 Because the proportion of Muslims and Christians in Nigeria is a sensitive political issue, the national census has not asked questions about religion since 1963. 3 In 1953, 21.4% of Nigeria’s population was Christian, 45.3% was Muslim and 33.3% belonged to other religions, including African traditional religions. By 1963, the percentage of the population that belonged to other religions had declined by 15 points, nearly matching the 13.1-point increase for Christians. During this same period, the percentage of Muslims increased by less than 2 points. 4 Christians have since increased in number and share to become about half of the population. Nigeria’s large Christian community is diverse. It includes nearly 60 million Protestants (broadly defined), about 20 million Catholics and more than 750,000 other Christians. All of Christianity’s major groups have grown in Nigeria since the 1970s, but the growth of pentecostal churches has been especially dramatic in recent decades.

5 Footnotes: 1 For the purposes of this report, traditionally Christian Western Europe includes the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. (return to text) 2 Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010-2030 , 2011. (return to text) 3 Getnet Tamene, “Features of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Clergy,” in Asian and African Studies, Volume 7, Issue 1, 1998, pages 87-104; “Ethiopia,” in David B. Barrett, editor, World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Study of Churches and Religions in the Modern World, AD 1900-2000, Oxford University Press, 1982, page 284. (return to text) 4 “Ethiopia,” in David B.

Barrett, editor, World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Study of Churches and Religions in the Modern World, AD 1900-2000, Oxford University Press, 1982, pages 283-284. (return to text) 5 “Ethiopia,” in David B. Barrett, George Thomas Kurian and Todd M. Johnson, editors, World Christian Encyclopedia, Volume 1: The World by Countries: Religionists, Churches, Ministries, Oxford University Press, 2001, page 266. (return to text) 6 “Ethiopia,” in David B. Barrett, editor, World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Study of Churches and Religions in the Modern World, AD 1900-2000, Oxford University Press, 1982, page 283. (return to text) Asia-Pacific (60 COUNTRIES AND TERRITORIES) The Asia-Pacific region includes 13% of the world’s Christians. 13 The region’s largest Christian population in absolute numbers is in the Philippines, a country that is overwhelmingly Christian (93%).

Christians make up a minority of the population in China (5%), India (3%) and Indonesia (9%), but because these countries have very large populations, their Christian minorities are large in number. Collectively, the 10 countries with the largest Christian populations in the region are home to 12% of all Christians worldwide. Slightly less than half of Christians in the Asia-Pacific region (49%) are Protestant, as broadly defined in this report (see Defining Christian Traditions ). Most of the remaining Christians in the region are Catholic (46%), while 4% are Orthodox. About 1% belong to other Christian traditions. Spotlight on China China, the world’s most populous country, is home to the world’s seventh-largest Christian population. (For details on this study’s multi-sourced estimate for China, see Appendix C [PDF] .) In the Asia-Pacific region, only the Philippines has a larger Christian population. Mainland China has roughly 67 million Christians, representing about 5% of the country’s total population. 1 China is home to the world’s largest number of Christians living as a minority.

(See Living as Majorities and Minorities .) As recently as three decades ago, few researchers even within mainland China knew whether religion had survived the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) initiated by Chairman Mao Zedong. It is clear now, however, that religion not only survived but that hundreds of millions of Chinese today have some religious faith, including tens of millions of Christians. Visible in nearly every major Chinese city are the steeples of churches affiliated with one of the two state-approved and state-regulated Christian associations: the Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the Patriotic Catholic Association. Both associations operate their own seminaries, employ thousands of clergy and are served by the Amity Printing Company in Nanjing, which prints more than 10 million Bibles annually. Despite these visible manifestations of Chinese Christianity, there are significant challenges in estimating its actual size. Published estimates range from about 1% of the population in some relatively smallsample public opinion surveys to about 8% based on reviews of church membership reports. 2 Indeed, the estimate offered in this study (5%) is only an approximate one.

(See Appendix C [PDF] for more details.) A precise figure for the number of Christians in China is difficult to nail down because, aside from the fact that China does not ask about religion on its census, there is no fully representative survey of China’s 1.3 billion people. A further complication is that a substantial number of Christians worship in independent, unregistered churches. These churches do not have legal status because they have not affiliated with one of the two officially approved associations. Unregistered independent Protestant churches, often referred to as “house churches,” meet in various venues including homes, rented facilities, businesses and even public places. Additionally, a substantial number of Catholics worship in unregistered congregations that refuse to join the Patriotic Catholic Association. A main point of contention is that the Association operates independently from Rome; for instance, it appoints bishops without the approval of the pope. Unregistered churches in China operate in what Purdue University Professor Fenggang Yang refers to as “grey” or “black” religious marketplaces. 3 In practice, unregistered churches are forced to operate on the edges of the law. This is because there are few specific laws that clearly establish the limits and freedoms of religious groups in society.

4 Because of the ambiguous, and sometimes adversarial, relationship between the government and Christian groups that are not willing to join the state-approved associations, attempts to measure the size of these groups can be met with suspicion by all sides. As noted above, this study’s review of numerous research sources suggests that Christians make up approximately 5% of China’s population, numbering about 67 million. Of these, roughly 9 million (0.7% of China’s total population) are Catholics, including 5.7 million who are affiliated with the state-approved Patriotic Catholic Association and a conservatively estimated 3.3 million who are affiliated solely with unregistered Catholic congregations. The exact number of Catholics in unregistered congregations is difficult to estimate because there may be double counting in some Catholic dioceses where churches and bishops are affiliated with both the official and unofficial churches. For instance, Beijing Archbishop Joseph Li Shan is recognized by both the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and the Vatican. Christians affiliated with the state-approved Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement number roughly 23 million (1.7% of the total population).

This study estimates that an additional 35 million Christians in China (2.6% of the population) are affiliated with unregistered churches or attend state-approved churches without having formal membership. Additionally, there are small populations of Orthodox Christians and other Christians, some of whom are expatriates. The general consensus among scholars of religion in China is that Christianity has grown substantially during the past three decades. It is too soon to know, however, whether Christianity’s growth has peaked or will continue in the years ahead. Whichever turns out to be the case, the religious future of the world’s most populous country will have a major impact not only on Christianity but on other religious traditions as well. (Additional information on the religious situation in China is included in Appendix C: Methodolgy for China [PDF] .) Footnotes: 1 This study includes separate estimates for Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. (return to text) 7 For more information on the Muslim population of the Philippines, see Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010-2030 , 2011.

(return to text) Middle East-North Africa (20 COUNTRIES AND TERRITORIES) The Middle East-North Africa region is home to less than 1% of the world’s Christians. 14 Only about 4% of the region’s residents are Christian. Although Christianity began in this region, it now has the lowest overall number of Christians and the smallest share of its population that is Christian. Christians are a minority in every country in the region. About half (47%) of all Christians in the region live in either Egypt or Sudan. Lebanon has by far the highest percentage of Christians (38%) in the region. The only other countries in the region where more than 10% of the population is Christian are the Gulf states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. About 44% of Christians in the region are Catholic, including many Eastern-rite Catholics. Roughly the same proportion (43%) are Orthodox Christian. More than one-in-ten are Protestant (14%). Spotlight on EgyptNo nation in the Middle East-North Africa region has a larger Christian community than Egypt.

Though media reports sometimes suggest that Christians make up 10% or more of Egypt’s population of approximately 80 million people, census and survey data analyzed for this report indicate that Egypt’s Christian population is about half that size. The study finds that there are 4.3 million Christians in Egypt — more than in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria combined. Nine-in-ten Egyptian Christians are Orthodox Christian. Most Christians in Egypt belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church, which is an Oriental Orthodox church. 1 (See Defining Christian Traditions .) Census and demographic survey data suggest that the Christian share of Egypt’s total population has been declining. 2 The highest share reported in the past century was in 1927, when the census found that 8.3% of Egyptians were Christian. In each of the eight subsequent censuses, the Christian share of the population gradually shrank. 3 The most recent census, in 2006, found that about 5% of the population was Christian. The Pew Forum’s 2011 report on the global Muslim population estimated that approximately 95% of Egyptians were Muslim in 2010.

4 Although Egypt’s Christian population is overwhelmingly Orthodox, other Christian denominations and movements have a significant presence in the country. For example, there are an estimated 140,000 Egyptian Catholics and more than 250,000 Egyptian Protestants. Evangelical, pentecostal and charismatic movements have influenced Protestantism in Egypt, leading, for example, to the formation of the Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services, founded by evangelical layman Samuel Habib in 1950 to promote community development. 5 Footnotes: 4 Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010-2030 , 2011. (return to text) 5 Paul Rowe, “Building Coptic Civil Society: Christian Groups and the State in Mubarak’s Egypt,” Middle Eastern Studies, Volume 45, Issue 1, 2009, page 120. (return to text) Footnotes: 8 To view all the countries and territories in the Americas, see the Interactive Maps . (return to text) 9 To see all the countries and territories in Europe, see the Interactive Maps .

(return to text) 10 To see how Russia ranks globally on government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion, see Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, Rising Restrictions on Religion , 2011. (return to text) 11 To see all the countries and territories in Sub-Saharan Africa, see the Interactive Maps . (return to text) 12 African Independent Churches are Christian churches in sub-Saharan Africa that developed and function outside the control of Western missions or churches. Some AICs (also called African Initiated, Indigenous or Instituted Churches) incorporate aspects of traditional African religions, including revelatory dreams and visions, healing practices and belief in a spirit world. For more information, see Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, Tolerance and Tension: Islam and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa , 2010. (return to text) 13 To see all of the countries and territories in Asia and the Pacific, see the Interactive Maps . (return to text) 14 To see all the countries and territories in the Middle East and North Africa, see the Interactive Maps .

(return to text) Pagination List of European Countries by Area By Amanda Briney Updated November 30, 2016. Europe is one of the world's continents and as such it occupies a large area of the world. It varies in latitude from places like Greece which is in the range of about 35˚N to 39˚N latitude to Iceland which ranges from around 64˚N to over 66˚N. As such Europe has varying climates, topography and city-types. Europe is made up of 45 different countries which range in size from some of the largest in the world to some of the smallest. The following is a list of the countries of Europe arranged by area.

1) Russia: 6,592,771 square miles (17,075,200 sq km) 2) Turkey: 302,535 square miles (783,562 sq km) 3) Ukraine: 233,090 square miles (603,700 sq km) 4) France: 211,209 square miles (547,030 sq km) 5) Spain: 194,897 square miles (504,782 sq km) 6) Sweden: 173,732 square miles (449,964 sq km) 7) Germany: 137,846 square miles (357,021 sq km) 8) Finland: 130,674 square miles (338,445 sq km) 9) Norway: 125,182 square miles (324,220 sq km) 10) Poland: 120,728 square miles (3

12,685 sq km) continue reading below our video 10 Facts About the Titanic That You Don't Know 11) Italy: 116,305 square miles (301,230 sq km) 12) United Kingdom: 94,525 square miles (244,820 sq km) 13) Romania: 92,043 square miles (238,391 sq km) 14) Belarus: 80,155 square miles (207,600 sq km) 15) Greece: 50,942 square miles (131,940 sq km) 16) Bulgaria: 42,822 square miles (110,910 sq km) 17) Iceland: 39,768 square miles (103,000 sq km) 18) Serbia and Montenegro: 39,493 square miles (102,286 sq km) 19) Hungary: 35,919 square miles (9

3,030 sq km) 20) Portugal: 35,672 square miles (92,391 sq km) 21) Austria: 32,378 square miles (83,858 sq km) 22) Czech Republic: 30,450 square miles (78,866 sq km) 23) Ireland: 27,135 square miles (70,280 sq km) 24) Lithuania: 25,174 square miles (65,200 sq km) 25) Latvia: 24,937 square miles (64,589 sq km) 26) Croatia: 21,831 square miles (56,542 sq km) 27) Bosnia and Herzegovina: 19,741 square miles (51,129 sq km) 28) Slovakia: 18,859 square miles (48,845 sq km) 29) Estonia: 17,462 square miles (45

,226 sq km) 30) Denmark: 16,638 square miles (43,094 sq km) 31) Netherlands: 16,033 square miles (41,526 sq km) 32) Switzerland: 15,942 square miles (41,290 sq km) 33) Moldova: 13,067 square miles (33,843 sq km) 34) Belgium: 11,780 square miles (30,510 sq km) 35) Albania: 11,099 square miles (28,748 sq km) 36) Macedonia: 9,928 square miles (25,713 sq km) 37) Slovenia: 7,827 square miles (20,273 sq km) 38) Cyprus: 3,571 square miles (9,250 sq km) 39) Luxembourg: 998 square miles (2,586 sq km) 40) Andorra

: 181 square miles (468 sq km) 41) Malta: 122 square miles (316 sq km) 42) Liechtenstein: 62 square miles (160 sq km) 43) San Marino: 23 square miles (61 sq km) 44) Monaco: 0.77 square miles (2 sq km) 45) Vatican City: 0.17 square miles (0.44 sq km) Reference Wikipedia.org.

(16 November 2010). Area and Population of European Countries - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from:

Question: Behind Russia, what is the second largest country in Europe?
Answer: Ukraine